This will be where I take my last breath. A thick noose with thirteen loops is snug around my neck, tight against the right side, so that it will snap my neck in the fall. My wool army sack coat, the only item I brought back from the Great War, is soaked in river water. The extra weight assures a clean break from the noose. I could not find a way to tie my hands together. I must fight the urge to grasp the rope to save me when I step forward to the edge. The tips of my boots hang on the side of the hill in the open air.
Tree roots pierce out from under the ground like thick fingers, desperately holding on to the edge of the hill overlooking the stream where I played as a young boy. I brought this tree to life. I planted the twig as a child and had barely been able to hold the heavy shovel. It has grown a foot for each of my inches while, in return, it hovers like a steadfast canopy over my life.
The cold fresh stream lumbers twenty-feet below. The water as deep as I tall brings life from the mountains above me. I know this stream and all the tributaries with each breaking channel and the rapids it produces.
My Marie is sad. I know she is. She calls for me. Swirls of leaves break away from the branches of my beloved tree, floating, spelling her name in the sky.
Her wedding dress, white eyelet cotton with lace, holds a vision so pure in my brain. But, alas, my last sight of her overwhelms my every thought, her bleached face, cold, covered eyes, and dry white lips; she lies in a wooden box surrounded in satin. Lifeless gold curls from her head once surrounded vibrancy.
Zedekiah lies in her curled arm, never taking a breath from birth. I see them standing above the horizon. They wait for me to be with them — her visage adding innocence of soul. My son’s breath, deep with inhalation, bestows life to his eyes that beg for me to touch him.
For you see, when I returned to my homestead, I celebrated the cessation of hell, fourteen months of torment and misery they called the Great War. My brethren, together, congratulated ourselves that we survived while killing others. Others we do not know, we will never know. We brought death and ache to families while wives yearn to hug their men once more.
I was gone, into town, celebrating my life while Marie gave birth while suffering her own death, alone. My toes curl inside my boots, the tips point down toward the stream. The noose strains against me. One more step, I can be with her again. I must atone for the laughter with my brothers in arms and her suffrage alone.
The sun, a beautiful gold, cresting above the deep green, cedar tree, covered hills, rises toward anvil topped cumulus clouds crowning the sky. Is Marie mocking me? I would think she would want my last sight to see darkness, the gloom of the world rather than what is here before me. Why does she not wish for blackened clouds, trees slashing in the wind, a torrential ice storm? Why a day of passionate flowers reaching toward clouds, beautiful songs flourishing from the birds in my tree, the rolling of water below me?
Below, I watch logs float down the stream as loggers cutting trees, readying others to build families and futures. I could, instead, fall down the hillside into the stream. The logs would crush me. No one would find me. No one would need to cut me down from my tree.
All this is distracting me from why I’m here. Take a step, one step. My boots shift forward, standing on my heels against dirt breaking away. I have but a second or two left. My heels drop, the blinding sun catches my eyes.
With sudden black vision and suffocation around my throat, I feel the rope shred skin around my neck. Lightning shoots down my chest and arms and then from my legs to my feet; as sudden as the lightning strikes, no pain covers me, only numbness. My breath is gone, my chest refuses to swell with air, lungs are frozen. My throat bent closed, dry tongue shooting forward, blocking air and saliva.
Yellow sunlight returns to my eyes as they bulge forward with pupils fully dilated. Pounding pulses radiate through my vision, the clearest ever. A bird floats above, he watches me. I can count his feathers, raising it higher in the warm air. He fades, now only a speck. Black rolls across my eyes again.
My hands, they are reaching, I feel them reaching around the rope. Stop. Struggling and kicking, the rope swings more. I feel my body dropping lower. The branch, it bends too much from the weight. I hear a snap and my back hits the hillside sliding down. My fingers fight for the placement between my neck and noose. Fierce cold surrounds me with a crashing splash. Unable to breathe, the tight noose denies the flowing water of drowning me. My tongue and teeth seer pain from the icy liquid engulfing me.
Which direction am I? Turning and spinning underwater, I decide I want to live. Air reaches my mouth as the noose loosens from my struggling fingers. A deep gasp surges into once motionless lungs. Blood rushes through my arteries, exploding fire into my head. My crushed throat rejects screams of joy. Logs bounce against me. I cannot keep up with their speed as each pass by me in a second. One will surely hit me and kill me.
The twist of now wishing to survive against the logs is more fearful than a tight noose around my neck seconds ago. Rapturous elation envelopes my body erupting this volcanic lava of life. I must escape this corral of logs beating against me before it expels my newfound bliss.
Desperation forces me to shove my fingers deep into the muddy banks as I crawl out of the water away from the logs. Fatigue grabs me. I can barely stay awake. I cannot move as water rushes across my soaked boots. I must rest for a few minutes.
Marie’s beautiful voice calls for me. I turn toward my tree, the ground below me feels empty as I am suddenly next to her beside my tree. It is a glorious vision, her in her wedding dress as she holds fresh flowers loosely in her right hand. Zedekiah is bundled in her left, cooing to me.
I feel the noose around my neck. The sun is the brightest I have ever seen. The flowers drop from her hand as she steps to my open arms. The softness of her fingertips touches my cheek, releasing an explosion behind my neck.
She’s gone.
In the quiet Smokey Mountains, hundreds of trees tower over a stream full of timbered logs. A broad-winged hawk circles above. Carolina Wrens call for their mates and Red-Bellied Woodpeckers drill for worms on a majestic tree as a man hangs from a branch two steps past the edge of a cliff.
